Ugbe: Success Comes by Doing What You Love
Managing Director of Multichoice, John Ugbe, is an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) freak, who has spent all of his post-graduation years in tech-related industry. In this chat with Ayo Arowolo, Ugbe explains how his background has assisted
How did you get into Multichoice? My job with Multichoice is my second one after the university. I graduated in 1996 and I joined Multichoice in 1998. Before I joined Multichoice, I had worked for NCR, the international IT (Information Technology) company. I graduated with Electronics and Computer Engineering degree. I joined Multichoice as an IT Coordinator at a time when the entire IT infrastructure in the company was changing. It was a challenge; I was coming from an organisation where I had worked with many IT engineers but there I had to be pretty much a loner. I was charged with the task of setting up the IT team, which did not exist at that time. Between the time and now, I have done many things in the organisation. I left the organisation at a point and left to set up MWeb in 2003, an Internet service provider which the group also owned. I left the company as the General Manager of MWeb in 2006.I also joined another company, an IT company which the Multichoice group also subsequently acquired. Then, I was brought back into Multichoice. It was at a time when Multichoice wanted to expand its Internet business on the continent. Multichoice operates in the pay entertainment industry. How would you profile the industry as of now?
Yes, we operate in the pay entertainment industry. We are more of subscriber- management company. We offer different services on different platforms, including satellite, terrestrial, mobile and the Internet. We have been in operations in the country for about 22 years. It is a business that has seen the evolution of entertainment and has been in the forefront of driving local entertainment. When I say local industry, what would come to your mind would be local music and Nollywood but we have also played a big role in sports. We have been at the forefront of developing the local football leagues through our company called Super sports. We did something for the local league, something which would be remembered for a long time, that is putting it back on the television. It was something we were going to achieve. Then, we moved on to basketball, table tennis, boxing...That is why we say we are a pay entertainment company. Entertainment is not about movie, not about music, for us it has to do with anything that brings the family together. How big is the market?
Everyone knows that Nigeria has a very large population. Obviously, it has to be a very large market. Is it where we want to be? No! There are still a lot to be done in terms of infrastructure development. We don’t just look at the total population; we look at different component, too. If you look at the population, you’ll find that majority of them are young people. That means there is a huge growth potential in the Nigerian market, and our responsibility is to continue to come up with programmes that will take care of the growing interest of the people and the families. It is a market in which we want to remain; it is not an aging population. And we foresee that entertainment will become the foundation of many things in the industry. We’ve got the talents and all we need to do is to continue to develop these talents as we spot them. So it is important that we continue to explore the market to discover new talents. We found that what has been lacking in the entertainment industry is the structure, and in most cases most of the interventions we have made have been in the area of creating the appropriate structures to enable the talents grow. A good example would be in sports where we have this programme for an Advanced Diploma course. It is run by the University of